February 27, 2010 at 20:31Rake from T-Mobile for G1
I found today a suddenly empty balance in my cell phone bought about a year ago. Initial suspicions were about problems on the part of the mobile operator, but with the help of Habra-people (special thanks to SabMakc ), the real problem was quickly identified. The American operator T-Mobile, “caring” for its users, has implemented the support of its “myFaves” service in the contact manager, and with it sending SMS to number 453, which occurs without any notification to the user. People have come across this rake since November 2008. Additionally, you can read the link (in English) or the blog (in Russian).
For a problem to occur, two things are needed:
Most often, the second item occurs when you get into roaming. I ran into this problem without any roaming at MTS. I read about similar cases with Beeline.
A couple of hours I was looking for a way to replace the contact manager without reflashing the G1. Have not found. I chose the method of flashing with a detailed description of the process, and further in this article I will write about “pitfalls”.
First, do not forget to backup data. To do this, I used the application “MyBackup”, which allows you to save data either to an SD card or to the Internet.
The firmware I selected is called CyanogenMod. There is an English manual for G1 and Dream. A USB-phone-computer cable is required. The only inaccuracy that I found in the instructions is that the link to the Windows driver is out of date. It must be downloaded using the “Android SDK” installer.
After flashing, the “flight” is normal, there are no extra SMS. The application is now called “Contacts Storage” and, judging by the “Permissions” list, it no longer has the ability to send SMS. Maybe only “directly call phone numbers”. :-(
For a problem to occur, two things are needed:
- Mobile with Android from T-Mobile and with the “Contacts and myFaves storage” application
- Sending SMS to number 453 should cost money.
Most often, the second item occurs when you get into roaming. I ran into this problem without any roaming at MTS. I read about similar cases with Beeline.
A couple of hours I was looking for a way to replace the contact manager without reflashing the G1. Have not found. I chose the method of flashing with a detailed description of the process, and further in this article I will write about “pitfalls”.
First, do not forget to backup data. To do this, I used the application “MyBackup”, which allows you to save data either to an SD card or to the Internet.
The firmware I selected is called CyanogenMod. There is an English manual for G1 and Dream. A USB-phone-computer cable is required. The only inaccuracy that I found in the instructions is that the link to the Windows driver is out of date. It must be downloaded using the “Android SDK” installer.
After flashing, the “flight” is normal, there are no extra SMS. The application is now called “Contacts Storage” and, judging by the “Permissions” list, it no longer has the ability to send SMS. Maybe only “directly call phone numbers”. :-(